President Donald Trump’s approval rating among Republicans is 99 points higher than Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY), according to CNN analyst Harry Enten.
The difference underscores McConnell’s diminished power in the Senate.
In the past few weeks, McConnell aligned with Democrats and voted against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. McConnell was the lone opposing Republican in most of the opposing votes, failing to persuade or cause fellow Republicans to tank Trump’s nominees whom he deemed unqualified or “unworthy.”
McConnell finds himself in a strange political situation and perhaps on the brink of political oblivion. As Trump leads the Republican Party toward America First and away from McConnell’s globalist ideology, the senator’s aides wheel him around in a wheelchair to vote against a Senate conference that he no longer controls with an iron fist.As the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense following his tenure as the longest-serving Senate party leader in American history, he holds some power in the Republican-controlled Senate but not enough to whip votes against Trump as he once did.
Enten found Tuesday that Trump’s approval rating among Republicans is 99 points higher than McConnell’s and 42 points greater overall:
Donald Trump
- Overall +3
- Republicans +82
Mitch McConnell
- Overall -39
- Republicans -17
“If I didn’t come along, the Republican Party wouldn’t even exist right now,” Trump said of McConnell last week. “He let the Republican Party go to hell.”
“He’s not equipped mentally. He wasn’t equipped ten years ago mentally, in my opinion,” Trump said.
The octogenarian’s influence also appears to be diminished by his health. In February, he fell down the stairs outside the Senate chamber, where reporters watched him regain his footing. He also fell in December 2024, continuing a pattern that raised alarms and left him with a hurt wrist, bruised hand, and bandages on his finger and face.
The falls were not the most concerning incidents. McConnell twice froze up while speaking to reporters. He was also treated for a concussion that occurred upon falling at a hotel in Washington, DC.
CNN: Donald Trump's approval rating among Republicans is 99 points higher than Mitch McConnell’s.
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) February 17, 2025
Trump +82
McConnell -17
"McConnell is far, far, far more underwater than any GOP leader in the last 40 years."
Turns out, being an anti-Trump Republican is one of the most… pic.twitter.com/gGHzGsaHdA
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
